


Occam Never Met John McClane

by lunabee34 (Lorraine)



Category: Live Free or Die Hard
Genre: Age Difference, Developing Relationship, M/M, Shaving Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-08
Updated: 2009-12-08
Packaged: 2017-10-04 07:03:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorraine/pseuds/lunabee34
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt can't stop staring at McClane's bald head</p>
            </blockquote>





	Occam Never Met John McClane

"You know you want to touch it," Warlock scrawls on the back of his meeting agenda.

Matt blushes. "Shut up," he says under his breath and jabs Warlock in the ribs with an elbow.

At the head of the auditorium, Bowman puts on what Warlock calls his constipated face and plants a red target on Matt's chest with his laser pointer. "Do you gentlemen have anything to add to the discussion?" He sounds exactly like Matt's eleventh grade English teacher. Crap. Matt and Warlock shake their heads, and Bowman turns back to his power point presentation. "Moving on then."

Three rows down, McClane turns around in his seat and flashes a smirk at Matt. Matt waves back, and Warlock draws hearts all around McClane's name on his agenda. Clearly, utter annihilation is the appropriate response, but Matt figures that will have to wait until they're not up to their ears in the Bureau's finest.

And anyway, Warlock's not wrong. Matt does want to touch it. To be fair, that's not _all_ Matt wants to touch, but yeah. It's a recurring fantasy. This is why Matt likes to cut face time with Warlock to a minimum; for a geek who spent the past thirty years living in his mom's basement, he's pretty damn perceptive.

Matt tries desperately to pay attention to Bowman, but no dice. Not with McClane scrubbing a broad and callused hand over his bald head every ten minutes or so like clockwork. Matt squirms in his seat, and Warlock covers an honest-to-god giggle with a coughing fit. Bowman clenches his jaw and raises his voice. Great. Matt thinks a little visit to Warlock's lj is in order later this evening. He's got some baby dragon eggs to assassinate.

Matt gets that this thing with McClane is kind of a weird kink. He does. In fact, he'd probably make fun of Warlock a whole hell of a lot more than Warlock's fucking with him if their situations were reversed. But Matt can't help it. He's always had this thing for hair—Suzy Carlson's bright red pigtails in the fourth grade, Curtis Johnson's buzzcut brushing along Matt's inner thighs at space camp, Ally Bray's curls damp with sweat on the nape of her neck after they'd kissed for hours at Dragon*Con. So, yeah. It makes a twisted kind of sense that Matt would fixate on McClane's baldness.

Bowman calls for questions and shuts down the projector when everybody thankfully keeps his mouth shut.

"Hey, kid," McClane says through the crowd. "Let's get a burger."

Matt shrugs. "Okay." He can totally play it cool.

Warlock follows them out of the building. "Your name kid?" McClane says to him, raising one eyebrow. Warlock rolls his eyes and steps back into the lobby.

"Oh, burn!" Matt says and grins like a loon. He would do a little jig, but he doesn't think his knee could take it.

"You two spend too much time together," McClane says and takes off down the sidewalk. Matt falls in step alongside him. "Makes Bowman antsy."

"What doesn't?"

"You got me, kid."

Matt hasn't seen as much of McClane as he'd like since the fire sale, at first because he was trapped in a hospital bed with a busted leg and later because the Bureau has them both working their asses off to mop up the mess that Gabriel made. That Matt helped him make. Matt tries not to think about that last part too often and hopes McClane does the same. He always drags Matt out for lunch if they're stuck in the same meeting, though, so Matt guesses he must not be on McClane's shit list even if he still seems to be on everyone else's.

"Bowman tells me you're looking for a place to stay," McClane says when the waitress brings dessert.

"Yeah," Matt says around a mouthful of meringue. "I've graduated out of protective custody. I can finally take a dump without some agent recording it in his logbook."

"Any ideas?"

Matt sighs. "Not really. They're paying me, at least, but I spent most of those first two paychecks on hospital bills, clothes, hardware…"

"Dolls," McClane interrupts. "Oh, excuse me. Action figures."

"Ha, ha," Matt says. "You should take that act on the road."

McClane leans back in the booth and takes a long sip of coffee, looks at Matt over the rim of his mug until Matt is convinced he's got lettuce between his two front teeth. "You could stay with me until you figure things out," he finally says.

Matt nearly chokes on a chunk of graham cracker crust. "What?"

McClane slaps him on the back and shoves Matt's coke into his hand. "You could stay with me," he says again.

Matt doesn't give himself time to think, doesn't give himself time to mentally list all the reasons that living with John McClane is probably a Very Bad Idea of Epic Proportions. "Yeah, okay," he says. "I could do that."

Warlock invites himself over to Matt's hotel room to help him pack up his gear. "Dude, I've got one duffel bag and three boxes. Your presence is not necessary."

"I'm one door down," Warlock says, rifling through a box of half-assembled motherboards. "Nothing better to do."

"Go away. I'm still planning my revenge for this morning."

"Whatever, man. I'm an impenetrable fortress." Warlock plops down on Matt's bed and flicks on the TV. "You better pray McClane doesn't find out about your little fetish. Now, _that's_ a man who could smack down some epic revenge."

Matt breaks out into a cold sweat. Warlock's right. Thanks to the media blitz, McClane's got groupies all over the country now, and while Matt's positive some of them are named Samuel and not Samantha, Matt hasn't seen any men hit on McClane. He's not sure how McClane would handle that, if he'd turn down a guy as politely as he has every woman under 80 in New York City or if he'd throw a punch. And Matt's not stupid; he's not planning to make a move on the guy, but he'd like to know his teeth won't be in jeopardy if McClane realizes Matt's attracted to him.

Warlock must see something on his face because he pats Matt awkwardly on the arm. "Hey, you'll be fine. Just quit staring at his head. And his hands. And his ass."

Matt faceplants into the mattress next to Warlock. "I am so screwed."

He spends the first couple of weeks at McClane's walking on eggshells, keeping his eyes to himself and his hands to himself. Matt didn't realize how often he touches McClane—a tug on his jacket sleeve to get his attention, feet stretched out into each other's space under tabletops—until he makes himself stop. McClane looks at Matt strangely sometimes, like he can't quite figure Matt out, but he doesn't say anything, so Matt guesses he's in the clear.

Lucy comes over for dinner one night, and when all the steak is gone and the dishwasher has been loaded, she drags Matt down the block for ice cream. "What is wrong with you?" she says while they're waiting for the light.

"Nothing. Why?"

"You're being weird. Weirder than usual."

"Gee, thanks," Matt says and hustles across the street. Lucy walks _fast_.

Lucy looks up at him from underneath her bangs, this thoughtful look that reminds Matt eerily of McClane. "You act like you're afraid of my dad."

Matt stops in the middle of the sidewalk, shocked, the flow of traffic parting around him. "What are you talking about?"

"You're always looking at the ground and shying away from him like you think he's going to bite you. Honestly, Farrell, the school girl crush was better than this shit." Lucy sticks her tongue out at an old lady bitching about teenagers blocking the sidewalk and pulls him into the Cold Stone Creamery. "Unless you really are afraid of him. I mean, I know he can…"

Matt cuts her off there. "What? Oh, my god. No!" He briefly contemplates hightailing it out the door and down a back alley, but there's no way he can outrun Lucy with a bum leg. Suddenly Matt feels very, very tired. He sits down at a window table and waits for Lucy to order. She brings him something piled high with chocolate and chunks of cookie, and Matt accepts it as the peace offering she clearly intends. He eats all the whipped cream off the top before he bites the bullet and tells Lucy the truth. "I didn't want him to know I'm attracted to him. I thought he might freak."

Lucy sighs. "Matt, he offered you a place to stay when you were making cow eyes and drooling all over yourself. I think he's past the freak out stage."

"Was I really that obvious?"

Lucy looks at him like he's an idiot. Matt can't say he blames her. "Just chill," she says, "before Dad thinks you're having some kind of psychotic break."

After that, Matt calms down, and things go back to pretty much the way they were before. McClane stops giving him those odd looks, and Matt quits worrying so much about whether McClane's going to kick him out or deck him.

"You dating my daughter now?" he asks one morning a few days after the Ice Cream Incident, and Matt shakes his head no. "Good," McClane says, and he seems so genuinely pleased that Matt is almost insulted. He's about to protest when Warlock pings him with a virus that infects his laptop with pop ups of Mr. Clean's head photoshopped onto a porn star's naked body. _This is for Eragon!_ the text reads. McClane doesn't say a word when he sees the images, just smirks like he knows exactly what's going on, and Matt blushes hot all the way to his collar. He's going to kill Warlock.

Matt spends the rest of the day searching out and destroying every last tendril of Warlock's virus and plotting some pretty monumental revenge. He's just past the brainstorming stage when he hears McClane's key scrape in the lock. "Wait until you see this," he calls out. "Warlock won't know what hit him."

Matt looks up. McClane is slumped in the doorway, his arm in a sling, a nasty bruise purpling over one cheekbone. "What happened?" Matt says. "Are you okay? You look like shit."

"You should see the other guy." McClane sits heavily on the couch next to Matt and closes his eyes. "I'm good. Just some strung out motherfucker robbing little old ladies in the parking lot of the Methodist Church. Nothing I want to talk about." They sit in silence for awhile, the stillness broken only by the sound of Matt's fingers on the keyboard. McClane keeps his eyes closed, and Matt is astonished when he realizes McClane is asleep.

McClane's face has gone softer in slumber, all his hard edges blurred. Matt wants to trace that bruise with his fingertips, press his lips to the corner of McClane's mouth and lick his way inside. He wants to unwind McClane's bandage and make certain that nothing too terrible is hiding underneath. He wants a lot of things he's never going to have, and so Matt eases up from the couch and covers McClane with a blanket.

The next few days are awesome. McClane can't go back to work until medical clears him, and Doc Brown insists on at least a week of downtime, maybe more if she doesn't like the way his arm is healing. Bowman won't pull him any strings either, so McClane is stuck at the apartment with Matt. He doesn't really seem to mind, though. They watch movies and eat too much takeout, and McClane teaches Matt to play euchre. If McClane would stop rubbing his hand over his head every five seconds, Matt would call this the most fun he's had in years.

Finally, Matt's had enough. "Cut it out," he says and grabs McClane's wrist. He can feel McClane's pulse against his palm. "You're driving me crazy."

"Sorry," McClane says. "It itches when it's growing out."

Oh. Right. His shooting arm is out of commission. "If it's really bothering you," Matt says, "I could shave it for you." Matt can't believe he just uttered those words. He resists the urge to clap his hand over his mouth but just barely.

McClane looks at him for a long moment with an expression on his face Matt has never seen before. "Okay," he says and heads into the bathroom. He sits down on the edge of the tub. "You know what you're doing?"

"Pretty much," Matt says. He cuts on the sink and hopes McClane doesn't notice the quaver in his voice. Matt soaks a towel in scalding water, wrings it out and drapes it over McClane's head. He expects McClane to make some crack about the spa treatment, but he keeps quiet, just looks at Matt with eyes gone dark and strange. Matt squirts some shaving cream into his palm and rubs it on McClane's head, the new hair prickly underneath his fingertips.

"There's a fresh razor in the medicine cabinet," McClane says, his voice rough and gravelly. He bows his head, and Matt drags the blade across the curve of McClane's skull, warm pink skin left in its wake. Matt runs a finger over that strip of exposed skin, and McClane shivers at his touch. Matt's half-hard, has been since McClane said okay, but that little shudder, that soft noise that McClane makes in the back of his throat when Matt touches him—they nearly make him come in his pants. Matt cups McClane's face with one hand, his thumb resting lightly on McClane's cheekbone and his fingers curling loosely around the back of his neck. This was never part of the fantasy—not this vulnerability, not this trust, not this silent man who trembles underneath Matt's hands. By the time Matt is finished, McClane's breath is ragged, his good hand white knuckled on the lip of the tub. Matt wets the towel again and wipes McClane down. He wants to put his mouth on all the places the razor's been, slide his tongue along that scar behind McClane's left ear, bite his way down McClane's neck and to his collarbone. He doesn't. Matt should back away now, but he doesn't do that either.

"Jesus," McClane says, head still bowed. "You're killing me, kid." Then he looks up at Matt with pupils blown wide, and Matt forgets how to breathe. Matt leans in and McClane lets him and then they're kissing. "Jesus," McClane says again when they break for air, his lips soft and swollen and wet. He fumbles one handedly with Matt's zipper and yanks Matt's jeans down around his knees. This was never part of the fantasy either—McClane's good hand leaving bruises on Matt's hip, his mouth stretched wide around Matt's cock—mostly because Matt could never convince himself that he would ever get this far. McClane sucks him slowly, like he's got hours to make Matt come, his tongue flicking over the head on every stroke. Matt pulls away before then, his cock wet and red against McClane's cheek.

"Fuck me," Matt says. "I want to come when you fuck me."

McClane kisses him again, and they stumble out of the bathroom and down the hall to McClane's bed. They're both naked before they get there. "Hurry," Matt says. "Please."

McClane pushes him down on the bed and fumbles with the lube, with a box of condoms. He presses wet fingers into Matt's ass until Matt's fucking himself on McClane's hand and moaning. McClane slides in balls deep on the first stroke and stays there, shuddering, until Matt swivels his hips. Then McClane fucks him, hard and fast and relentlessly until Matt arches his back and comes all over the sheets.

"Matt," McClane says when he comes. "Matt. Jesus."

"I mostly answer to Matt," Matt says.

"Smartass," McClane says and swats him on the ass before collapsing on the bed next to him. "So shaving, huh?"

Matt thinks about it. "Apparently. But mostly just you."

McClane grins. "Let's hit the shower, kid. If you're lucky, I'll let you shave something else." Matt kisses him again just because he can, and this moment--McClane's leg thrown over his, his smile curling against Matt's mouth--this moment wasn't on the list of fantasies either, but Matt thinks he can deal. He's an adaptable guy.


End file.
